Six Steps to Make a Good Huatia

The month of May began, bringing the harvests, and with them a delicious huatia and the scent of the earth. The word huatia is on the lips of every Cusqueño along with the desire to prepare one with their family and friends.

Huatia Ready to Eat (Walter Coraza Morveli)

During May, people can’t wait for weekends to come in order to prepare a huatia as well as share moments together, enjoying the natural flavors that the Pachamama gives us.

How can we forget the second week of May, Mother’s Day and the 24th of June. Those are the days when almost everyone eats a traditional huatia as a family.

Early the morning of Mother’s Day we went to the San Pedro Market to buy the necessary ingredients to prepare our Huatia. These were huayro potatoes, floury and with good flavor. We also bought yellow ocas and some that were reddish. We looked for fresh ones. In our garden we grew broad beans and so we had them too. The ingredients were ready to be placed in a hot oven of earth, once we built it.

Here are the steps we used in making our huatia (the word refers to both the oven and the resulting dish).

Make an oven out of clods (curpas)

Heat the oven for 30 minutes at least. C

Put the products into the oven.

Collapse and cover the oven with dirt, wait 30 minutes at least.

Uncover the food.

After your food cooks with the heat from the burned clods, you pull out all the products and place them on a cloth. It is now a festival de emotions and sensations for every mortal. This is the Andean huatia prepared with your family.

After the fun we had making the traditional huatia, we enjoyed the flavor of the earth, the Pachamama, and celebrated all the mothers of Cusco on their day.

Here we leave you with a video we made of how we prepared our huatia, so that you can have the same experience and make a huatia at home with your family